Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 28 Krieber By Amethyst

The moment that the lurching sensation from the teleportation began to recede, something big and hard slammed into me and sent me flying. What the fuck? I didn’t even have a few seconds to get my bearings before I was sent rolling across the ground like a person-shaped bowling ball to crash into a wall.

It was only my speed, reflexes, and big pointy ears that allowed me to somewhat roll with the blow and avoid the follow up attack, as whatever had hit me smashed into the wall and sent debris flying everywhere. Stone shrapnel pounded me as I got to my feet and tried to take stock of my injuries while putting some much-needed space between myself and whatever had hit me. This wasn’t good, the fight had barely started, and I was already on the back foot, and I didn’t even know if I was facing the actual General of this gatehouse yet.

From the aches starting to form all over my body, I figured that I was likely bruised all over, but I probably got off lucky since only a few ribs were causing me serious pain. They didn’t feel broken at least, probably just cracked. It wasn’t as serious as I feared while getting to my feet, but it still made moving and even breathing painful.

Flying was going to be rough, but I focused on the twin swords mark below my navel and changed to my angelic form before quickly taking to the air. I was right; the movement of my winds seemed to jar my ribs with every beat, but I needed to put a bit of distance between myself and whatever had attacked me. Not only would it, hopefully, give me an aerial advantage and more space to react to attacks, but I needed to at least get a look at whatever I was dealing with.

Whatever it was, it recovered as quickly as I had from its crash into the stone wall and I could see it moving before the dust even settled. It was a tall and lanky male humanoid, almost eight feet tall, with sickly-looking swamp-green skin. His head was disturbingly large compared to his lanky body, especially the area of the brain, and was protected by a set of four massive black horns that curled up over it. Even with his imposing height, he looked ridiculously top-heavy and his little beady eyes looked tiny in his bestial boar-like face. He even had the tusks.

He wasn’t wearing any sort of armor, but then, he wouldn’t really need it. Instead, he wore a simple black toga and sandals and several steel bands around his upper arms and lower legs. His hideous green skin was half-covered in some sort of tribal tattoos.

Unfortunately, Torphael’s memories were able to give me a pretty good idea of what I was dealing with. It was a Gharl. Out of all seven Generals, why the hell did I have to get Krieber? On the upside, he was one of the few Demon Generals that we had been able to get any information on, but he was also probably the worst of the seven for me to face.

Gharls can’t use magick and their bodies are surprisingly frail if you can hit them without protection, but they make up for it with their psychic abilities. From what Kisha was able to tell us, Krieber was the most powerful and versatile Gharl that Heil had ever spawned. He was able to use his psychic abilities to sense the area around him without using his physical senses, boost his strength and speed, and maintain a constant psychic barrier around himself that would make my swords and holy arrows effectively useless.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it as a barrage of debris from the damaged wall of the large courtyard flew toward me, forcing me to allow myself to drop a good ten feet to avoid it. “Dammit, I need to go on the offensive here. I can’t let him keep controlling the flow of battle,” I thought to myself bitterly.

Barely dodging a large stone that hurtled through the air toward me, I linked my swords together at the pommels to form my holy bow and rained arrows of light and purified magick energy upon my opponent, hoping that I could wear him out by having to defend himself from so many deadly projectiles at once. His damned shield held as I had to drain one of my trio of okka crystals.

The bastard laughed off my attack, even as I bombarded him with even more arrows, and the holy magick they contained dissipated before they could reach him. That shield was so fucking unfair and annoying. I couldn’t even sense any fluctuations or weak spots in the shield and between all of those arrows I was firing and trying to stay in the air to keep some distance between us, I was going to need to drain another okka crystal soon.

Maybe I should try to make him wear himself out, if I couldn’t overpower his shield. He wasn’t drawing on magick energy to fuel his abilities, so they probably used up physical energy. If I made him continuously keep his shield up, moved around a lot so he had to keep that psychic sense of his on me, and goaded him into senseless attacks fueled by his psychic powers, then maybe I could tire him out enough to get a decent hit in. It was a better plan than trying to overpower him, which clearly wasn’t working.

I forced a laugh and somehow managed not to hiss at the pain it caused in my ribs. “Seriously, Krieber?! Is this all you got?! I came here expecting to fight a General, a warrior, not some asshole who bumbles around and hurls things like a toddler throwing a tantrum!”

As he roared in fury, I touched down on the ground, firing a single arrow from his left side before powerful beats of my wings took me back in the air as he rushed at me, narrowly avoiding me. Damn, he was fast, almost as fast as I was. I shot another arrow at his back as he managed to stop his forward momentum, just short of the tower at the center of the open courtyard. I dashed around like that for a while, managing to avoid his rage-fueled attacks and taking shots of opportunity.

I drained another okka crystal along the way, leaving me with only one remaining, but this was working. He was tiring, his attacks were slower and he was taking longer to pinpoint my location during my counterattacks. I probably should have realized that he was up to something when he stopped to glare at me maliciously.

A barrage of stone debris from one of his many collisions with the courtyard walls during our battle hammered me from behind, knocking me to the ground and causing searing pain in my ribs. The bastard targeted my injuries from before with a telekinetic attack. I was still trying to get to my feet when he collided with me and knocked me back down to the ground and before I knew what was happening, I was pinned beneath his massive foot.

I was nearly blinded by the pain in my ribs when a new source of pain assaulted me, like someone was digging into my brain with an icepick. ~ Pathetic Celestial scum. You thought that you could overcome me, a General of Heil? I have crushed the life from those who have attempted to usurp my position for centuries, just as I shall with you. I will break your bones, one by one, until you beg me for the release of death. I may even grant that wish. ~

The pain rushing through me increased tenfold as one of the major bones in my right wing seemingly snapped of its own accord and I screamed. I had barely stopped screaming when he snapped the same bone in my other wing. All that I could feel was the agony of broken bones and the pulling sensation of my bond with Shannon. “Focus dammit!” I scolded myself through the pain. “Shannon might need you and if you die here she would be devastated, it would probably cause a big enough distraction for her to lose her battle too. This is too important. Shannon is too important for you to let something like a little pain stop you from killing this lanky piece of shit!”

Shannon. It hadn’t quite been love at first sight when we met during her first day at St. Catherine’s, but I was definitely attracted to her and I had this strange feeling that just knowing her would change my life for the better. She was also the most beautiful girl that I had ever met and while she seemed friendly and confident, there was also this vulnerability to her because she was dealing with a new life and issues that I didn’t know about and probably couldn’t have even comprehended at the time. Later that afternoon I learned in the worst way that magick was real.

All through that ordeal, I just wanted to protect Shannon, the girl that I was quickly falling for and so very attracted to. In the chaos that followed, I became her Familiar. Our minds and hearts were suddenly connected, and it was impossible not to fall head over heels for her after she had saved us both and with the feelings that I sensed from her.

By the time we had our first real date, I was well and truly smitten. That was the same night that Sarah, Annie, and the two of us were all dragged into this war with the Demons. Coming here, taking on the most powerful Demons in Heil on their own turf seemed like fate now, just like my bond with Shannon. Even through our battles with Demons and Sorcerers, the loss of my humanity, and the things that Shannon had revealed in Nhekar, our bond, and our love had endured, and become stronger still. I had come to love her more than anything or anyone.

What wasn’t there to love? Sure, she was beautiful and had that mix of confidence and vulnerability that I loved, but she was also possibly the most powerful person on Earth, but she never let that power corrupt her. Sure, she kicked Demon ass when needed, but Shannon was gentle, kind to a fault, and would even help her worst enemy if they needed it. She always wanted to be a better person, and she made me want to be a better person too.

These thoughts of Shannon tightened my focus, during the brief instant that they flew through my mind and drowned out my screams. She was my Witch, my love, and my north star and I would do anything for her. I would even find a way to kill this bastard.

I made myself focus on Shannon, and the pull of our bond, brutally shoving the pain in my wings and ribs to the back of my mind. I was pinned, and my bow was out of reach, so how could I take Krieber down or, at the very least, give myself some breathing room? Another pull besides my link to Shannon teased at my mind, not as strong, but perhaps useful in my current situation.

Precious metal, the sense and manipulation of it was something that Talisha had drilled into me relentlessly since I had become her apprentice. Faery can all sense and manipulate them; even the earliest games of young Fae involve that sense and ability. It is as inherent to Faery as our ability to use glamours.

Krieber was wearing metal, and I could use that. If I couldn’t overwhelm or wear down his defenses, maybe I could get inside of them. The steel bands that he wore on his arms and legs were useless though; iron is the one metal that Faery can’t manipulate, and that steel had a very high iron content. What was the metal that I was sensing then?

Pushing through the pain and doing my best to ignore Krieber’s laughter and taunts about which bone he should break next assaulting my mind, I focused on the pull of metal and followed it. A gaudy chain hung from his neck, bearing the massive claw of some beast as a centerpiece, likely a trophy of some sort. I probably hadn’t noticed it before because of his massive head, but now as he leaned over me it swung within my sight, taunting me.

I forced myself to speak, my throat raw from screaming, and I had to grit my teeth against the pain in my wings and ribs as he pressed his foot down harder on the latter. “H…hey, ass…hole, how do you breathe… with that thing on?”

His momentary confusion was enough to allow me to focus on my task and push away the pain that I couldn’t allow to distract me. The chain was brass, with trace amounts of gold, and for a moment, I narrowed my focus on it alone. Everything else was unimportant. Under my guidance, the links of the chain liquefied, turning into a vaguely gold-hued blob, which rose to encircle Krieber’s neck as the claw that had been attached hit the ground beside my head.

I allowed the metal to solidify once more, a choker with no release or latch around the Gharl’s neck, and then I tightened it, the metal becoming gradually thicker as it tightened further and cut off his air. Krieber’s eyes were wide as he clutched at the metal, struggling to breathe and too desperate to remove it to find more of my bones to break. The weight of his foot on me lessened and I dismissed my angelic form, the pain from my wings vanishing along with both them and my bow as I gave a shove with all of my strength that caused my injured ribs to shoot fiery pain through me in protest.

That top-heavy asshole fell to the ground like the tipped-over bobble-headed motherfucker that he was as he vainly tried to remove my little gift and I rolled out of the way. As Krieber struggled on the ground and his face began to lose its color due to lack of air, I considered just watching him asphyxiate. No. We were better than that; Shannon would want us to be better than that. Instead, I drew the 44 Magnum from its holster on my belt and put a demon-slayer round into his head.

A moment later, there was only a pile of ash, the steel bands, his clothes, and the choker lying on the ground to mark Krieber’s passing. I was in agony and bruised all over, but I could deal with that. The fight was over and I won. I briefly changed back to my angelic form, but the pain that assaulted me from my wings when they reappeared showed that they were still broken. I would have to get Ellie to heal them later, along with the rest of me.

“I guess I’ll be going by foot then,” I muttered as I changed back to normal and basked in the lack of agony coming from my wings. I opened my portable bunker just long enough to use the bandages in the first aid kit to bind my ribs, swallow some aspirin for the pain, and wash the pills down with a bottle of water. I wasn’t willing to waste time on anything else, not when Shannon might need me.

I was her Familiar, her girlfriend, her bodyguard, and a whole lot more. My place was at Shannon’s side, keeping the love of my life safe. I would get there to protect her even if I had to fight my way through every inch of this city that stood between us. Any Demons stupid enough to get in my way would just be more ash on the ground because nothing was going to stop me from getting to the girl I love.